On Saturday we went to the St. Patrick’s Day parade! We dressed in green, but since it was raining and cold everyone had to wear coats and hats over their green clothes. I made little shamrocks out of felt for the kids to pin to their hats so we would feel like we had the appropriate Irish pride for the parade.
Elora and Oliver take Irish dancing lessons and their school marched in the parade.
The kids with more dance experience performed little dance steps along the parade route. Since Elora and Oliver are new, they handed out flags to the spectators. Elora said she was a little sad because she was expecting crowds like at the Macy’s parade in Miracle on 34th Street. But the kids have been talking about the parade and playing parade around the apartment all day, so I guess fun times were still had by all in spite of the rain and lack of crowds!
The parade ended at a festival in the brewery. It was a bit too crowded to be enjoyable for the kids, so we headed out early and walked back to the Brunnenmarkt outdoor market. We passed these weird rock looking things on the way which the kids thought were AMAZING and had to stop and pose and play for awhile before heading to the market for bread and flowers.
We finished off our day with a bit of children’s theater! I read about a play called “Dick Whittington and his Cat” on facebook and decided to take the kids. It was really cute. It is the kind of play where the actors interact with the audience, and only three actors played all the parts in the play. The kids had a great time afterwards trying to count up all the different parts each actor played. I’m so glad I read about it! The Theater Spielraum is not too far from our place and the actors and people who worked there were all super friendly. It was a really great theater experience for the kids.
Interestingly, the Theater Spielraum is housed in what used to be the Erika cinema, the longest continuous running cinema in the world, that originally opened in 1900 and running continuously from 1909-1999. It was renovated and opened as the intimate Theater Spielraum in 2002. I am curious to attend one of their regular performances to see how it goes. I wish they did more children’s theater! They only have one children’s show per year, so luckily we heard about it.
It was a cold, rainy, but still fun day in the city!
